Parole board delays decision on Spears execution until Wednesday

Even though Steven Spears has refused to take any steps to stop his execution, scheduled to occur Wednesday evening, his lawyer and anti-death-penalty forces on Tuesday urged the parole board and the courts to call off the lethal injection, arguing the 54-year-old killer is mentally ill.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles met throughout the day with those wanting the execution stopped and those wanting it carried out. Then the board postponed its decision until Wednesday. Spears is scheduled to get the needle at 7 p.m.

Spears has always admitted he murdered his ex-girlfriend, Sherri Holland, in her Dahlonega home in August 2001, several months after she ended their three-year relationship. He has stuck with the position that he wants the death penalty, and has refused to appeal his conviction or his sentence.

During his trial in 2007, Spears barred his lawyers from presenting evidence that might have swayed the Lumpkin County jury to vote for life in prison. Spears has also refused to meet with attorneys who have come to the prison; his last contact with his trial lawyer was 20 months ago.

Still, on Tuesday, Spears’ trial attorney and lawyers from the Federal Defender Program, which represents death row inmates, met with the parole board for three hours, trying to make a case for mercy — or at least more time.

“We presented it (the case) the best way we knew how,” said Allyn Stockton, Spears’ lawyer.

Meanwhile, others turned to the courts with a "next friend" petition, which can be brought by a person "who has a significant relationship" with a person sentenced to death who refuses to appeal.

Gwen Thompson, Spears’ third ex-wife and the mother of one of his four daughters, said in her petition that no court has reviewed his case or heard about key aspects of Spears’ life that might make a difference.

According to the petition, Spears has family members with mental illness, he was abused and neglected as a child, and he was subjected to bullying because his family was poor and his clothes were shabby.

Also, mistakes might have been made in his trial that are undiscovered, according to the petition filed for Thompson by the Georgia Resource Center, which represents death row inmates.

The state’s lawyers responded, however, that there was nothing showing that Thompson still had “a significant relationship” with Spears. Court documents did not say when their marriage ended — their daughter was born in 1988 — but the state attorney general’s office wrote in its response that Thompson had not written or visited Spears in all the time he has been in prison.

“His next friend has failed to establish that she is truly dedicated to Spears’ best interest and has a significant relationship with Spears,” stated the response filed Tuesday.

Thompson’s petition included an affidavit from a psychologist who reviewed Spears’ records and writings but was unable to meet with him.

“Spears suffers from a mood disorder and may suffer from organic brain dysfunction,” the psychologist, Robert Shaffer, wrote in a sworn statement. “There is a biological component to exposure to abusive, stressful and adverse events in childhood, which disrupt key biological and psychological developmental processes.”

The attorney general’s office countered that experts had said Spears was competent prior to trial. The state’s lawyers also wrote that Shaffer could not adequately appraise Spears’ mental health without having spoken with him.

There is no decision as yet on the “next friend” petition, which was filed in Superior Court in Butts County, where Georgia’s death row is located.

If Spears is executed, he will be the eighth person Georgia has put to death by lethal injection this year, more than any other state in 2016 and more than any other year in Georgia since 1957, when 16 people were executed.

After Spears murdered Holland, a 34-year-old single mother, he bought a license and gear and went fishing. Then he hid in the woods for 10 days. Spears was picked up while walking to town to surrender.

Spears said he had warned Holland at the beginning of their relationship that he would kill her if she replaced him. Several months after Holland ended their relationship, Spears plotted her murder by making meticulous plans to kill her in any of four different ways — electrocution, beating, shooting or suffocation.

Spears ultimately chose suffocation.

He hid in a bedroom closet for about four hours, then crept out in the early-morning hours of Aug. 25, 2001, after he was sure Holland was asleep. He choked Holland unconscious, then smothered her by wrapping duct tape around her face and mouth, placing a plastic bag over her head, and sealing the bag with duct tape.

That weekend, Holland was supposed to go on her first date since she and Spears broke up.